Page 60 of Claimed By her Alien Prince

"What are we going to do with him?" Marduk demanded, waving his sword threateningly.

"Take him up to the brig, lock him up for now," I ordered, before I frantically scanned the hall for Lilith.

Azazel noticed and pointed to where Lilith and the other girls were huddled by a pillar. "Go get your bride, she's hurt. We'll take care of this."

"Lilith!" Fear clawed at me even though I tried to tell myself that she couldn't be hurt that badly if Azazel had been so unconcerned about it. Then again, this was Azazel, who had only yesterday joined Grigori, Marduk's, and my little rebellion against our father.

Grigori, Marduk, and I had been planning a rebellion for many years. I didn't remember a point in our lives where we would have been willing to seriously hurt each other. We had a bond. A bond that had been nurtured by Ishtar since birth. A bond she had been trying hard to forge between us brothers but having to keep it quiet from Behlial had made it harder for her.

She loved all of us as if we were her own, and we loved her as if she were our birth mother, since we had never known them.

Behlial had always been a dark shadow in our lives, but some of us, like Nergal and Abaddon, lived only to find the King of Darkness's approval, to have him call them son. Something that repulsed me was something they craved with all their being. They thought becoming the victor in this sick quest would ensure Behlial's final approval, but they had been wrong.

For years, I tried to figure out which side Azazel stood on and feared there was only one side for Azazel: His. Contrary to the rest of us, he neither craved Behlial's approval, nor Ishtar's warmness, or even his brothers' company. Azazel was a loner. Grigori, Marduk, and I had been wary of approaching him, worried he would betray us to Behlial just because it would serve his whim at the time.

Until last night.

When I saw him with the girl. A girl who wasn't even one of the seven maidens.Leave it to Azazel, I thought,to even do this in his own way.

After I saw Lilith off, Azazel pinned me against the elevator wall, his red eyes blazing. Ready to end me, he held a dagger to my throat. But there had been something else in his eyes, something I had never thought possible. Besides hesitancy to kill me, there had not only been true affection for me in them, but something else, something I recognized because I had seen it in my eyes in the mirror. Something that Lilith had changed inside me and the same something was reflected in Azazel's eyes.

"You love her," I said with the dagger pressed against my throat. I could have kicked out, he could have driven it deeper, but neither of us moved.

He wanted to, the fight inside him was obvious. He knew he had to kill me because I had seen his secret, and if he wanted to keep her safe, he had to end me. But he didn't, and in that instant, I realized he was one of us, he was like Marduk, Grigori, and me.

"There is another way," I told Azazel.

"There is no other way," he replied, while sweat dripped down his forehead as his inner war fought on.

"Trust me. You're not alone."

"I've always been alone," he sneered, and the blade dug deeper into my neck.

Again I considered kicking out at him, his blade wasn't made from mortferrym, but if he took my head off, he could kill me all the same. Something stopped me though. With Azazel on our side, we would be four, we would have a chance of ending Abaddon and Behlial.

"Not anymore," I reassured him, placing my hand on the arm that pressed the blade against me.

His eyes blazed with fury, fury at himself for not killing me when he had the chance. I was still nervous that he would drive the knife deeper, that I might have to killhim, but with an expression of utter disgust at himself, he withdrew the dagger, shook his head, and cursed. "This better be good,brother."

And so I filled him in. I told him about Grigori and Marduk, and our plan to wait and see if we could find more information about the quest, about the lone survivor's fate, before we took Behlial down.

Azazel listened, and in turn admitted to having been ensnared by a human female, just not one of the chosen seven.

"She is a Nayphyllym," he added defensively. Intrigued, I wondered how and where he had found another female of this precious race on Adama but suppressed my questions. Time was of the essence, and the longer we lingered by the elevators, the greater the chances of discovery and someone reporting to Behlial that we had been talking instead of literally taking each other's heads off just to gain Behlial's favor.

"Will you fight by our side, brother?" I asked, holding out my hand.

"When?" Was all he wanted to know.

"Soon. As soon as the time is right and we have some answers, and before it's only one of us left standing," I assured him.

That moment came sooner than expected when, the next day, after I took Abaddon out, it became obvious that the King of Darkness would not answer our questions, in factcouldn'tanswer our questions.

I hadn't taken Lilith into my confidence on purpose. The less she knew, the safer she would be from the repercussions should our little plot fail.

Lilith!

It always came back to her. My brave, surprising, fighting mate.

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